


As Above, So Below

by newisalwaysbetter



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Flowers, Loneliness, Mention of Canon Death, Neighbors AU, Weather, cuteness, subtle details
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-14
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2021-01-30 18:41:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21432904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newisalwaysbetter/pseuds/newisalwaysbetter
Summary: Prompt: "the power goes out in our apartment building, but i’m not prepared for this, and you come to check on me."In which there's a winter storm, and Flynn's just worried about the upstairs neighbor he hears singing sometimes, that's all.
Relationships: Garcia Flynn/Lucy Preston
Comments: 5
Kudos: 53





	As Above, So Below

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for brief mention of canon death, otherwise it's all fluffy stuff.

He knows the sound of her.

Flynn prefers to read on his apartment balcony in the golden autumn evenings, even as the summer flickers and dies. He has sweaters enough to bear the brisk, and although he’s lived through enough to have earned peace, the muted thunder of the city suits his vigilance better than the tomb-like silence of the apartment itself.

When he first heard her, at the dawn of summer, Flynn had resolved himself to finally surrendering to dark memories, because that song had died in Lorena’s lungs. But this voice had only grown, flowing down from above, and as the long sunset evenings stretched on, he grew to appreciate its brassy, raw and melody. Lorena’s voice, different, had been made for hymns.

He hears her angry, too. There are one-sided arguments just out of his hearing--over the phone, maybe, or with herself. She’s loud, and indignant, and occasionally resigned, and on those days Flynn wonders who could have argued her down.

She gardens. He’s embarked on a survey of Russian literature by the time the autumnal westerlies start blowing flower petals into his face. Flynn looks up one cool night, and with the grace of a trained soldier, catches a rose petal out of the air. They had been velvet once, and are now turning to dust.

The days drag on, and the city quiets, as the parties die with the summer and the snowbirds depart. The occasional dying leaf flutters down from above, but Flynn no longer hears his upstairs neighbor puttering around on her balcony. Her footsteps have always been light, so there’s no way to know if she’s still present. He tries not to think of her too often. 

The woman had moved in at the beginning of summer, and as her plants wither, he wonders if she will go out with them.

Then, against his denials, winter comes. The balcony doors slam open, and the nightstand gun is in his hand before he’s awake enough to hear the roaring wind. Flynn creeps barechested out of the bedroom, and straight into a wall of frozen air.

He triple-checks each lock every night, even living as he does on the thirteenth floor, but nonetheless the glass doors stand open, spilling glittering snow across his living room.

It’s cold around his ankles when he wades in. The doors, buried in inches of snow, barely shift under his forearms, and Flynn growls into the night. He can do this alone.

Just as he's shoving a chair under the handle, Flynn hears the crack of doors again. From above.

She might be gone but she might need help but it’s an intrusion but it’s a hardwood floor but they’ve never met but he could barely close his own doors alone...

There’s a quiet _whoosh_ as the building goes dark.

It takes only a moment to dress himself, to gather the essentials, and to lock the door behind him as he slips into the hall. He resists the urge to check his hair in the mirror.

It’s too dark as it is. Flynn creeps down the hall towards the stairs, his ever-active mind straying to thoughts of threats; looters. Then he comes around the corner towards the stairs, and bumps solidly into something at chest height.

There’s a grunt, and as they stumble apart, he makes out a person in the darkness. “Mr. Flynn?”

That voice. He knows._ Lucy?_

The woman upstairs had assumed, in his mind, something of the character of an angel: floral, majestic, and personally radiant. The reality is considerably shorter, with a bedhead halo of dark hair and a frying pan clutched in one hand.

_Right._ Flynn steps back, holding up his hands. He’s accustomed to making himself smaller when needs must, and he does so now in order to look her in the eyes. Those, he had gotten right. They are dark and sharp and luminous in the darkness.

“We haven’t met,” he fumbles, gesturing uselessly.

“I haven’t met anyone, but--you took my packages,” she exclaims suddenly. There’s no anger there, but Flynn has never appreciated having fingers in his face. The corner of his mouth twitches.

“Hey, it’s not my fault the delivery man didn’t want to lug them all the way up to the fourteenth floor.” _Though it may be my fault I decided to do it._

He had come home one day to find a life’s worth of packing boxes piled around his door, and a deliveryman insisting that he sign for them. A moment’s glance had confirmed that said boxes were intended for the apartment above, and persistent curiosity had driven him to ferry them up to her door (and to examine the nameplate on the mailbox). He had left a note, signed his last name, but by now he’s beginning to wish he hadn’t.

“What, you didn’t lose anything, right?”

“No, but you don’t understand. I’m sorry; it’s been a long night.” She slides a hand through her tangled tresses, and huffs tightly. There’s too much tension in her for this time of night. Flynn’s memory stirs. “I need your help.”

“Your balcony doors opened?”

“How--? Oh, you heard.” Then her smile opens like a flower, and she laughs. “You must have heard a lot.”

“No, I enjoy listening to you.” It’s far too early an admission, but when has he smiled last? When has he spoken to anyone for so long?

Lucy laughs, thank god, and this time a shadow passes over her smile. “You don’t have to say that. But thank you.”

The upstairs apartment is as dark as the rest of the building, but laid out much the same as his, and moonlight sparkles off the snowy floor brightly enough to make out its contours. Dressed as Flynn is in a thin shirt, Lucy fusses over him in the cold, and his soul warms unusually. All the same, it’s not as though she has any coats large enough to fit him, so Flynn acquiesces to a blanket thrown over his shoulders before he braces against the doors and_ fights._

“You were my first thought,” she admits, after, when the floor is clean and she’s lighting candles. “I needed your help then, and thought you might help me now, and--” She growls at her own wordlessness. “I’ve been awake all night. You must think I’m crazy.”

“I think you’re _something,_” Flynn jokes, and means more.

He doesn’t expect to be asked to stay. But idle conversation establishes the reasoning that neither of them will be sleeping, and the excuse that her balcony doors already strain against the wind, threatening to cave in once more. He’s a bit too large for her couch, but, in an imitation of companionship, fits beside her somehow. Lucy drags the blankets off her bed, and there are far too many, and they’re still warm and smell, as before, of flowers.

Flynn is grateful to be beside her, but also takes note that there’s nowhere else to sit. The candlelight dances on her bare walls, across her spartan apartment, over her wan face. He has occupied himself with a book, but eventually looks up and finds her staring at nothing.

“You didn’t want to be alone,” he ventures.

Her cold eyes fix upon darkness beyond what he can see. Her hand, in his, tightens. “Not tonight.”


End file.
